Utility assets include sewer, storm, fiber, and gas pipelines for utilities such as, natural gas, electric, water, sewer, stormwater, telecommunications, gasoline and oil. In order to maintain utility assets, and to do construction in and around utility assets, it is absolutely essential to have accurate maps of the utility assets. Inaccurate maps can lead to serious damage to utility assets, and to disruption of vital utilities. Even worse, inaccurate maps can lead to injury and even death of utility workers and civilians, as occurred in 2004 in California when a backhoe excavating for a water distribution line punctured a buried high-pressure fuel pipeline. Gasoline released into the water pipe trench was ignited by welding activities inside the pipe, creating an explosion that killed five workers.
Companies have long attempted to maintain accurate records of utility assets using various surveying techniques. In recent years, global positioning systems (GPS) have been used to more accurately ascertain the position of utility assets. Some of these prior art systems are bulky and must be transported to a site in a truck or trailer. To cut down on bulk, some prior art systems employ a hand-held GPS unit with internal memory. A utility worker surveying for utility assets stores the GPS coordinates of found utility assets in the internal memory. Later, the stored GPS coordinates are manually transferred to a database in an asset tracking computer. By manual transferring, it is meant that either the GPS coordinates are read from the GPS unit and typed into the asset tracking computer, or the GPS unit or memory of the GPS unit is connected to the asset tracking computer and electronically transferred.
While potentially providing more accurate location information, the process of finding the utility asset, storing it in the GPS unit, and manually transferring it to the database is still cumbersome, and error prone. Furthermore, the coordinates by themselves are not as useful without a utility asset type assigned to those coordinates. Thus, additional steps often required in the prior art include the utility worker keeping a record of the type of utility asset at the coordinates, and manually transferring the type with the coordinates, after storing. Some attempts to eliminate some steps of the manual transfer process have been made by employing a GPS unit with built-in Bluetooth transceiver (IEEE 802.15). However, since Bluetooth has a range of only tens of feet, the pairing of GPS with Bluetooth for the purpose of transmitting coordinates to an asset tracking computer has proved to be less than practical in real world application.
Thus there is a need for a wireless utility asset mapping device and method. Also, there is a need for a system and method to wirelessly transmit GPS coordinates of utility assets over a long distance to a remote asset tracking computer. Additionally, there is a need for a system and method to wirelessly transmit GPS coordinates and other data related to utility assets to a remote asset tracking computer.